29 October 2015

One of Scotland’s most striking new building projects took a big step towards reality recently with the help of two of our student designers.

'Gorebridge Beacon' aims to provide a suite of affordable business space for rental on subsidised terms with meeting rooms, flexible conferencing and learning space, a community cafe, a Sure Start nursery and a youth space, giving the town of Gorebridge a major boost.

The volunteer-led charity behind the currently-under-construction
£2.2m Gorebridge Beacon centre, set to open next year, worked with final-year design students Rhys McGeary and Liam Henderson to create a new brand identity for the centre. The brief was to create an identity that symbolised the mission of the new centre - to give people in the local area a new start and make their lives better.

The students worked on the project over the summer in collaboration with Stephen Fraser at Midlothian Council and the Gorebridge Community Development Trust. Stephanie Walker, co-chair of the Trust, praised the collaboration.

"By working together, we’ve got a really
professional product and the students have got something really solid in their portfolios. Given all the Trust is doing, making this centre
work is and continues to be a challenge for our small volunteer-led trust and
that won’t get any easier when we open our doors as we will have difficult
targets to reach. That’s where a good
brand identity and excellent promotional work will pay off.
The brand identity will now be used across the centre’s
website, social media presence, signage and promotional material. "

The Brand

Rhys “The client
brief was really interesting but challenging, because it offers so
many different things, from the cafe to conference venues and offices for hire,
the audiences are all ages, from school pupils, to teenagers right up to older
people, from charities to professional businesses. The trust were also clear that they wanted
something that reflected both the building, its name, and its ambitious social
purpose. "

Liam “Getting a design right
involved a lot of discussion while ensuring that the end product had purpose
and meaning. We worked on four different creative routes and whittled that down to the final one after a number of meetings and presentations. Hopefully it will help the client achieve their purpose in helping people get more familiar with the
centre and more likely to use it.”

The building of the £2.2m centre has been funded from grants provided by the Big Lottery Fund,
Social Investment Scotland and Midlothian Council.